Excavating Harsh Memories at Bedrock Level

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum demonstrates how profoundly effective it can be when, instead of striving for maximum height, architecture delivers the more visceral experience of the unfolding path.

When it comes to architecture, the normal assumption is that it builds upward: pyramids; skyscrapers; the twin towers, pushing up to 110 stories each—the world's tallest when they were completed in 1973.

But there is another way for architecture to go. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum demonstrates how profoundly effective it can be when, instead of striving for maximum height, architecture delivers the more visceral experience of the unfolding path.

The journey begins at the entrance pavilion designed by Snøhetta—the New York- and Oslo-based architects who became famous in 2002 for their Alexandria Library design in Egypt—which sits midway between the memorial waterfalls marking the footprints of the original towers. Initially, the plan called for a full-scale building that would house the Freedom Center (and Drawing Center) but due to controversy and budget constraints the project was scaled down to the size of a portal and the museum moved underground. The pavilion is clad in a shimmering coat of steel mail and glass, crouching down—some say, being crushed—in an asymmetrically animated posture that feels appropriate for the start of an Orpheus-like descent.

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Jin Lee

It's a modest shelter for visitor security processing, some amenities and a well-lighted threshold for the stairs leading past the pair of recovered trident columns from the east face of the North Tower, down through an intentionally darkened passage on an inexorably gentle decline to bedrock, 70 feet below. The sense of processional is precisely choreographed and spare. Davis Brody Bond, the architectural firm known for dignified academic, medical and institutional buildings (part of the team that designed the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington), wisely chose to keep the materials and details simple in contrast to and, possibly in needed relief from, the nearly overwhelming multitude of charged displays, audio recordings and personal artifacts in the museum.

Much of the design work lies hidden. The structural innards that make everything functional are so intricately layered and entwined that nothing could be built without accounting for everything else: The roof of the adjacent train-station mezzanine had to be built before the floor of the surrounding plaza could be installed; the foundations of the entry pavilion had to angle away from the support beams of the transportation hub—the trains actually run through a portion of the south footprint. And everything had to be blast resistant and flood proof.

From a balcony halfway down the ramp, one gets the first glimpse of the famed and steadfast slurry wall and also of the enormous scale of the north footprint, now a tub for one of the two memorial waterfalls. As glowing boxes, they are what define the 110,000-square-foot space, rather than the darkened walls of the perimeter. Their luster contrasts with the jolt of reality from the battered remnants of sheared-off box columns, sections of poured-concrete foundation and other bits preserved in place that once anchored the Twin Towers and now console by evoking the durability of ancient ruins. (The exit stairs from Vesey Street that provided the last escape route have been preserved too, and relocated to run alongside the stairs that visitors take to step down to the museum floor.)

If one were to proceed only this far into the museum—and for many it may be too soon or too difficult to take on more—where only a dozen or so large-scale recovered and commemorative pieces are on display, one would still be powerfully moved by the scale of things. There are the eight-story-tall trident columns; the 192-foot sides of the footprints; 2,983 blue pieces of paper, one for each person lost, constituting "Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning" by artist Spencer Finch, who was commissioned to create the only artwork for the museum in order to distinguish the outside wall of the Repository of Unidentified Remains. All reflect the enormity of the event.

While the exhibitions within each of the footprints are tightly packed, the spaces between are generous and unencumbered. There are well-placed benches outside the exhibition detailing the events of the day and also clustered around the last column where there is an interactive touch-screen nearby for visitors to add messages and stories of their own. The trail leads visitors finally full circle, back to the light at the top of the stairs. Outside, the memorial plaza is teeming with people who mostly seem to gravitate to the waterfalls, leaving welcome patches of wide-open grass and trees. Right now it's a place for milling and a far cry from being reconnected to the life of the city.

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A fire truck with its cab ripped away.
Jin Lee

But the final composition is taking shape. Along the east side, a wall of construction continues—with the 72-story Tower 4 designed by Maki & Associates, at the southeast corner, setting an elegant example in sleek glassiness. Hard-by, the platform base of the 80-story Tower 3 by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners looks muscularly overbuilt with columns and crossbeams aplenty. It appears to be poked by the horns of Santiago Calatrava's multibillion-dollar stegosaurus-shaped transportation hub right next door, a strange beast of a building that actually looks too diminutive to need so many concrete ribs encasing the so-called Oculus grand concourse. It is hard to imagine that in the small slice of land between the spiky hub and the looming World Trade Center One there will someday also be both an 88-story skyscraper by Foster + Partners and a performing-arts center by Frank Gehry, although that is currently in limbo. The airiness of the memorial plaza itself should remain forever intact thanks to the one unanimous decision made at the very beginning of the fraught rebuilding process: to reinstate Greenwich Street, which was cut off 40 years ago by construction of the World Trade Center Plaza. It now runs south again, passing between the towers and the plaza.

Along with the towers will be some 615,000 square feet of retail space, about five levels in each tower. From the start and during rebuilding, there were always clashes—construction workers clearing debris sharing the sidewalks with shoppers at Century 21—and there could be dissonances for years to come. The hallowed themes of commemoration and consolation embodied by the 9/11 museum will always jar with the hubbub of daily life. But perhaps it is in paying attention to those awkward, even disturbing, contrasts that people will come to appreciate how exceptional and precious the routines of daily life can be.

I visited the plaza last year and was pleased to find it both busy and hushed surrounding the beautiful pools. I look forward to seeing the Museum where the ugly nature of the attack will always remind us of that tragic day. It should also remind us of the commitment that we have made to the security of this nation. The greatest memorial to those who perished and their families will be that such an event never happens to their children.

I was disturbed that CAIR is opposing the use of word "Islamists " in the Memorial. We should always remember that it was Muslim extremists who destroyed these lives and that the Muslim world is still afire with violence and terrorism. We cannot let political correctness make us forget that the enemy is still out there.

I have a little trouble with memorial sites becoming tourist attractions. I will reserve judgement until I hear from the family members and friends of those who were lost on that day. I've listened to veterans of the USS Enterprise who were happy that the ship was scrapped, as no floating exhibit could ever properly define those who served, were injured, and even gave their lives for this ship and their country. In that sense, no museum could ever possibly do honor to those who gave up so much and my thoughts may simply want to believe that such terrible things should never happen. It is very difficult to think about.

“The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are at peace.”

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